You may also have already heard about "the break up." When players change teachers, it reasons all varieties of buzz in the golfing international.
When Westwood and Foley referred to as it quits after 7 months, the hypothesis commenced.
Randall Mell wrote about it in his GolfTalkCentral column Wednesday, and it got a brief mention on Golf Central. You can read the original article at the link above, but I'd like to spend a few moments on one sentence from Lee:
?I simply desired something else, a new way of teaching.?I guess that sums up most of the player-instructor changes on Tour -- any tour, for that matter. In the great search for something that will give them an edge, get them out of a funk, or just make them feel better about their games, even the best players in the world will move from a teacher who got them "there" (in Lee's case, that's Pete Cowen, who also teaches Henrik Stenson) to someone who'll give them "something else."
That's now not a grievance of Lee Westwood, now not by any stretch of the imagination. Lee left Cowen some time back to move it on his very own. It changed into an comprehensible circulate -- he'd come so near triumphing a first-rate so frequently, he likely simply concept he turned into missing some thing.
I suspect the reason for the Westwood/Foley split is simply a difference in feel. At the risk of oversimplifying things, Foley teaches a modern swing (the legs pull the arms around) while Cowen teaches more of a classic swing (the arms and legs split the effort more evenly) -- a powerful version of the classic swing, but classic technique nonetheless.
Don't misunderstand me. The fundamentals of each swing are basically the same; it's just that the swing feels very different. For example, the bottom of the swing moves to a slightly different place when you change from one to the other. That's because your legs are driving harder in a modern swing than a classic swing. And for a player like Lee Westwood, who's spent thousands of hours working with a teacher who teaches a more classic swing, that can be a hard adjustment to make.
I wouldn't write whatever (like personal animosity between Lee and Sean) into this circulate. But I think it is a good lesson about simply how distinctive the teachings of two main instructors can be. Lee didn't need "something else" a lot as he wished "extra of the identical, simplest better."
And due to that, I might not be amazed if Lee doesn't don't forget running with Cowen again. If Stenson's progress hasn't satisfied him that Cowen can adapt his teaching, not anything will.
02-18-14 update: GC says that Westwood is now working with Mike Walker, a Cowen protégé.
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